VOLCANIC ASH

By David Shapiro

As their contract negotiations move into mediation, we've heard much talk from Hawai'i public school teachers about what they want to get — salaries that reach as high as $100,000 a year for their most senior members.

Before the contract is settled, we need to hear a lot more about what teachers are willing to give to the cause of improving our schools to be worth that kind of money.

In particular, what accountability are teachers willing to accept for raising the achievement of Hawai'i students, which now ranks near the bottom of national averages for proficiency in reading and math?

To this point, teachers have mostly fitted themselves with halos while blaming the rest of the system for shortcomings in our schools — as though they aren't the ones standing at the front of the class every day.

Hawai'i's 13,000 public school teachers have set 2009 salary goals of $45,000 for beginning teachers, $60,000 for the average and $100,000 for veterans at top scale.

This represents an increase of 23 percent at the bottom of the scale, where starting teachers now earn $36,486, and a whopping 51 percent at the top, which is now $66,203.

These pay levels, which teachers don't necessarily expect to reach in this contract, are reasonable — if teachers take more responsibility for the system's success by tying a portion of their pay less to seniority and more to their results in improving learning.

The system also would benefit from less restrictive teacher work rules that prevent schools from moving quickly to modernize and make it difficult to sanction lagging performance.

As in any other profession, teachers range in ability from the truly exceptional to the uninspired.

Performance-based compensation is the best way to reward the former and encourage the latter to improve.

There's simply no better way to jump-start education reform than to tie a portion of salaries at all levels of the Department of Education to meeting fair goals for higher student achievement.

The department also should have the right to use more meaningful pay differentials to attract teachers in hard-to-fill specialties such as math and science and recruit teachers for less desirable districts.

The question is whether the state has the political will to fight for a contract that serves the interests of taxpayers as well as the teachers.

Under Act 51 passed by the Legislature last year, which transferred power from the central DOE to the schools, negotiations are under way with principals for performance contracts to hold them accountable for meeting student achievement goals.

One of the biggest concerns of principals is that they have little control over the quality and performance of teachers assigned to their schools.

They make the fair point that if their tenure and compensation will be tied to the success of their schools in achieving results, then teachers and administrators also should be bound to performance contracts aligned to the same goals.

The Hawaii State Teachers Association, in blaming Hawai'i's teacher shortage on low pay, always points to Hawai'i teachers who leave for jobs in other states that pay better.

What they never say is that many of those teachers are going into systems that perform better than Hawai'i's because they demand the kind of accountability for results that Hawai'i teachers refuse to accept.

Teachers crave the respect of being treated as professionals, which is only fair given their importance in the community.

But that means being judged like other professionals on the results they produce — and not clinging to their blue-collar contract with one-size-fits-all wages and overly bureaucratic work rules.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net.